Places and forms of power
To start with, I will going to talk about the notion of places and forms of power. First, let's define the notion. In politics and social science, power is the ability to influence the behavior of people. In order to live together, members of a community accept rules, regulations, and laws. This helps to create social cohesion, but can also lead to conflicts and tensions. Even when authority seems absolute, there are always counter-powers which question it, aiming at limiting its excesses and resisting it.
What powers are native people given in their own countries?
Different types of power exist around the world. However, many people have power with various scales. For example, the Native American people are victims of abuse of power like mistreatment, abuses, and murders. They were forced to support this abuse of power over the course of many years. Today, the rights and laws of people have evolved. These events take place in America, but also in Australia with the aboriginal. To represent this topic, I will use the testimony's Coriolis and an extract of, "Mr. Neville says No." At first, we will talk about the Native American power. Then, we will see the aboriginal's powers between 1900 and 1972
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Native Americans were wrongly called "Indians." It was Christopher Columbus who called the people living in America "Indians" because he had thought that he discovered India. This population was met with a problem: the expansionist claims of the white people in the late 20th century. The white people wanted their land which they had harshly won. The Native American were deported because their education and their culture was rejected by the new colonists. Three factors accelerated their disappearance:
- The Gold Rush in California in 1848, which attracted gold hunters to the Native American lands.
-The transcontinental railroad. This was a railroad that had been built and destroyed nature in the process.
-The end of Buffalo. Buffalo is a kind of cattle hunted and eaten by the Native Americans.
This notion can be illustrated with the example of Corliss's life. Corliss is a 19-year-old young woman of Indian origins. She explained a dilemma in which she was confronted due to her Indian education. She wants to study poetry because it is rejected in her education as a result of the past. In fact, when her uncle was a child, he was abused by white teachers. That's why he hated white people and culture. To conclude, she was educated in the resentment of white people as a result of their abuse of power in the past.
The aboriginal suffered of a similar situation. In fact, they were mistreated when they lived in Australia by the white people as well. They have a life in accordance with nature, and their education and culture was substantially different. They were deported too, but based on the children's skin color. The fair-skinned children were sent to proper school to educate them in white culture, while the dark-skinned children stay at the settlement and would become servants or farm laborers. At the entrance of the settlement, the children were sorted by skin color. Extracted from the movie called, "Mr Neville says No," we can see this selection by skin color. In fact, a doctor with scales of skin color selected the children. This selection separates many sisters and brothers, causing the fair-skinned children to be forced into a new life in a white family. They must forget their brothers and sisters and accept the white education, while the dark-skinned children must accept each horrific task they are being asked to complete.
Personally, I think such extreme racism is totally unacceptable. This is because every person deserves to live, and no one is more deserving than another. People that feel superior feel this way because they have power. This then turns into abuse of power because they use their power to destroy populations, not for the well-being of the people, but to separate races.
To conclude, we can say the Native American and aboriginal people were mistreated by white people. They have to face racism all day because they have less power than the white population. However, today the rights and laws make life much easier for them.
(feel free to change anything that you think I did wrong)
